No, I'm not talking about our nation becoming involved in fighting the current scourge of the world, ISIS.

Instead, I am closer to home. If people wonder why, at times, it appears to be so difficult for Republicans to win and then stay in office, then read this.

Defendants launched and aggressively pursued a secret criminal investigation targeting every major right-of-center advocacy group in Wisconsin on the view that this kind of “coordination” between a candidate and supporters of his policies is illegal. They also claim the power to restrict speech on public policy issues based on an advocacy group’s communications with a candidate, whether or not that speech has anything to do with that candidate’s own campaign or election.

In short, Defendants claim a carte blanche to target more or less every person or group that has ever participated in Wisconsin political or policy debates, to raid their homes, seize their records and personal effects, subpoena their emails and phone records, and threaten them with prosecution - all things that Defendants actually did in this case – merely for speaking out on the issues. It would be difficult to conceive a more offensive disregard for the First Amendment rights of citizens to advocate and associate with others to advance their beliefs through the political process, the very lifeblood of representative democracy.

Defendants did not adopt this indefensible legal position out of some misplaced zeal to enforce Wisconsin campaign-finance law. The facts show that it was a pretext, contrived to support the latest phase of a years-long crusade against Governor Scott Walker, his associates, and now his philosophical allies. What began four years ago as a routine investigation into missing charitable funds immediately morphed into a pursuit of all-things-Walker, as Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm and his accomplices repeatedly expanded their investigation to pursue new angles and new targets.

Many social conservatives say they feel politically isolated as the country seems to be hurtling to the left, with marijuana now legal in Colorado and gay marriage gaining ground across the nation. They feel out of place in a GOP increasingly dominated by tea party activists and libertarians who prefer to focus on taxes and the role of government and often disagree with social conservatives on drugs or gay rights.

I can commiserate with the evangelicals. Though we are on opposite sides of a number of issues, I know what it is like to feel as if there is not a party nor politicians who represent what you believe. For many years, my choices seem to be "Democrats, somewhat attuned to my social views but waaaaay out of whack with fiscal, small government and freedom issues" versus "Republicans, somewhat attuned to fiscal & small government - but prehistoric on many social issues." Some years, I'd vote for independents, knowing that essentially I might as well have stayed home and watched returns of Leave It to Beaver .... or I'd pick one of the major party candidates - often Republicans. Particularly in my state, my vote would often be with little enthusiasm, both because I disagreed with the candidate on a number of issues and because I knew the odds of Republicans in Minnesota winning are often slim to none.

Elizabeth Warren, a tenured celebrity professor who jumped into politics, and Barack Obama, an untenured law school instructor, who made it big in politics, know exactly why student loan debt is so high and why their measures do nothing to address its real causes.

Harvard Law paid Warren $350,000 to teach a single course. When Scott Brown brought it up during a debate about student loans, she protested. "I want to talk about the issues. Senator Brown wants to launch attacks."

At the modern university, the tenured celebrity professor who doesn't teach and gets paid is the 1 percent and the adjunct that teaches, but is unlikely to ever get tenure or a decent paycheck, is the 99 percent. But just as national inequality did not happen because a few CEOs receive huge salaries, student loan debt didn't spin out of control because of a few celebrity Socialist 1 percent professors.

The problem is always in the middle. In both the national economy and the campus, the biggest driver of inequality is bureaucracy.

The average ratio is two administrators to one full-time faculty member. In the 1960s it used to be two faculty members to one administrator. The runaway increase in administration has only increased in recent years and it will only continue to increase.

The devaluation of college diplomas is already leading some employers to unnecessarily demand graduate degrees. Eventually we will be stuck in a European system in which everyone has an armful of degrees and no one has a job.

The only way to reduce the trillion dollar mountain of student loan debt is by reforming higher education. Anything else is another cynical gambit by millionaire leftists who use inequality as a political weapon while denying the equality of merit that made higher education into the great equalizer to those who needed it the most.

Last week, Walmart announced that it distributed $3 million last year to charities here, including $1 million to the New York Women’s Foundation, which offers job training, and $30,000 to Bailey House, which distributes groceries to low-income residents.

The letter came days after Walmart announced it had given $3 million to New York City groups, including City Harvest and One Hundred Black Men, out of a total of $1.2 billion to non-profits nationally.

But Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito called the donations “toxic money,” and accused Walmart of waging a “cynical public-relations campaign that disguises Walmart’s backwards anti-job agenda.”

Joel Berg, who heads the New York City Coalition Against Hunger, which this year collected $800,000 from Walmart – the coalition’s single largest private donation – said he had no intention of giving the money back.

“I don’t think there’s a single non-profit group in America, or a single elected official in America, who agrees with every position of every donor,” he said.

“We have had it, our constituents have had it and everyone we know in this city has had it with [Walmart],” said ringleader Daniel Dromm (D-Queens), who took ­political correctness to the extreme by calling on charities to return the company’s contributions.

“We have had it, our constituents have had it and everyone we know in this city has had it with [Walmart],” said ringleader Daniel Dromm (D-Queens), who took ­political correctness to the extreme by calling on charities to return the company’s contributions.

Writing yesterday about the IRS’s amazing loss of more than two years of Lois Lerner’s emails (“Where’d they go? They were here just a minute ago!”), I wondered in passing how the Extended White House Public Relations Office, e.g., the New York Times, MSNBC, et al. would handle the news. The Nixon White House, you’ll recall, found quite a lot of the morning’s scrambled on its collective countenance when 18 and 1/2 minutes of audio tape somehow—somehow!—went missing as the Watergate scandal unfolded around the president.

What a godsend to the guardians of our “Right to Know” Watergate was! Day after day, week after week, month after month, the front pages and editorial pages of our former Paper of Record were full of stern admonitions about that egregious abuse of executive power. You could not look at the paper without a synesthetic shudder: Reading it, you could almost hear them licking their chops as their prey—the dastardly Richard Nixon—came ever closer to his doom.

So how does the New York Times handle this extraordinary loss oftwo years’ worth of Lois Lerner’s emails? (“Really, they were here just a minute ago. We were just about to hand them over to Congress when, gosh darn, they just vanished. Damndest thing.”)

This will amaze you, I know, but it is true: the New York Times today devotes zero words to the story.

Here we have a former senior official from the IRS who deliberately harassed hundreds of conservatives groups. She has taken the 5th Amendment—why? What sort of self-incrimination is she worried about? A look through her emails would have the answer. But those emails are, according to the IRS, unavailable because of a hard disk failure. Do you believe that? Do you believe that the agency charged with tax gathering for the United States does not have multiple backups of its business correspondence? Do you? Imagine what the IRS would have to say to a (conservative) business it decided to audit if a request for electronic records was met with, “Gosh darn, we had a hard disk failure, and they’re just plum gone.” Imagine. And why have there not been instant calls for the data recovery folks to get involved? Why? The public, I’d wager, would find all this keenly interesting—if only the people charged with reporting the news would tell them about it.

Maybe I am naive, but I wouldn’t be surprised if those missing two years’ worth of emails does for Obama what the missing 18 1/2 minutes of audio tape did for Richard Nixon.

So how does the New York Times handle this extraordinary loss oftwo years’ worth of Lois Lerner’s emails? (“Really, they were here just a minute ago. We were just about to hand them over to Congress when, gosh darn, they just vanished. Damndest thing.”)

This will amaze you, I know, but it is true: the New York Times today devotes zero words to the story. Take a look at the front page here: Nothing.

Irate liberals took to Twitter to denounce the UNCF donation, just as they protested a New York City hospital for taking a $100 million donation from David Koch. It is not immediately clear why these people hate the idea of providing scholarships to African-American students.

@RBPundit@AP The Kochs dont do anything without a motive and its not to help black kids, you ignorant fuck

More than half a century after the death of McCarthy (and, we had thought, his method of waging politics) Left-wing McCarthyism dominates the discourse of too many college campuses, supposedly the home of learning. Unfortunately, the campus where I teach, the University of Hawaii, is among them. With collective identities of gender, race, and class dominating practically every discussion, both in and out of classes, professors seek to protect themselves from attack from the politically correct through ritual obeisance. Liberal arts education is no longer even slightly “liberal,” (a word derived from the Latin “libertas,” or liberty, subsequently resurrected by the civic culture of early modern Europe). Students are systematically discouraged from questioning the new orthodoxy, sometimes through bullying and sometimes through the threat of ostracism, enforced by “speech codes.” Administrators have at best become apathetic in promoting a free exchange of ideas and have signed on as sensitivity police.

One wonders how much longer students and their parents will tolerate the ever-increasing costs and ever-decreasing intellectual diversity of today’s politically correct campuses. How much longer will Left-wing McCarthyism be allowed to dumb down higher education in the liberal arts?

Because of California's Proposition 209, public universities such as UCLA cannot use race as a factor in admissions. However, as this book shows, UCLA gives significant preferences to African Americans, while it discriminates against Asians. The author, a professor of political science and economics at UCLA, documents what he witnessed as a member of UCLA's faculty oversight committee for admissions.

He also describes findings from a UCLA internal report as well as statistics from a large data set that he has posted online. All show that UCLA is breaking the law. The discrimination is not simply a byproduct of class-based preferences. For instance, for one aspect of the admissions process, a rich African American's chance of admission is almost double that of a poor Asian, even when the two applicants have identical grades, SAT scores, and other factors.

The Emerald City may witness the economic dangers of hiking the minimum wage to $15/hour sooner rather than later. SeaTac, a suburb of Seattle, hiked the minimum wagefor certain service industry employees to $15 at the beginning of the year, and there are already signs that the sudden increase is having a negative impact.

At the Clarion Hotel off International Boulevard, a sit-down restaurant has been shuttered, though it might soon be replaced by a less-labor-intensive cafe…

Other businesses have adjusted in ways that run the gamut from putting more work in the hands of managers, to instituting a small “living-wage surcharge” for a daily parking space near the airport.

That’s not all. According to Assunta Ng, publisher of the Northwest Asian Weekly, some employees are feeling the pinch as employers cut benefits. She recalls a conversation she had with two hotel employees who have been affected by the wage hike:

“Are you happy with the $15 wage?” I asked the full-time cleaning lady.

The hotel used to feed her. Now, she has to bring her own food. Also, no overtime, she said. She used to work extra hours and received overtime pay.

What else? I asked.

“I have to pay for parking,” she said.

I then asked the part-time waitress, who was part of the catering staff.

“Yes, I’ve got $15 an hour, but all my tips are now much less,” she said. Before the new wage law was implemented, her hourly wage was $7. But her tips added to more than $15 an hour. Yes, she used to receive free food and parking. Now, she has to bring her own food and pay for parking.

What explains the legislature’s transformation into the dysfunctional body it is today? Some argue that California’s population is now so vast that it is almost impossible for state legislators to gain adequate knowledge about the people and landscapes they ostensibly serve.

Term limits—amended in 2012 to allow 12 consecutive years of service in either the assembly or senate—may also partially be to blame. Sacramento has few experienced legislators. Most lawmakers spend their brief time in office planning for their post officia careers, either by courting lobbyists, making deals with the governor to secure lucrative sinecures as administrative grandees on well-paid state commissions and boards, or eyeing another elective office. Corruption is a problem, too. Currently, Democratic state senator Roderick Wright is on paid leave—rather than being expelled—from the legislature after being convicted by a Los Angeles jury of eight felonies related to campaign fraud. Democratic state senator Rod Calderon also went on paid leave to face more than 20 felony counts of bribery, money laundering, and fraud. The most recent example is also the most shocking: Democratic state senator and gun-control advocate Leland Yee was indicted in March for conspiring to commit wire fraud and traffic weapons.

But a more far-reaching explanation for the legislature’s behavior is that the state became both fabulously wealthy—California is home to more billionaires than any other state—and very poor. Those in between are either marginalized politically or, as we’ve seen, moving out. California today is largely a cartographical abstraction. Two profoundly different cultures and landscapes have evolved over the last half-century and now seem arbitrarily lumped together.

An overclass—much of it living in the state’s most heavily populated corridor, within 50 miles of the coast from Berkeley to San Diego—is doing quite well economically, despite the state legislature’s incompetence and job-shrinking policies.Many of California’s most affluent residents, at least so far, tend to shrug off high taxes, viewing income redistribution through taxation as a sort of psychological penance for their super-wealth. Residents of La Jolla, Santa Monica, and Palo Alto can afford the private schools that are sprouting up in the manner of Southern academies following the court-ordered forced busing of the 1970s. They seek class homogeneity in their gated enclaves, and they don’t worry about the high power bills of the poor residing in the frequently sweltering interior—much less the effect of illegal immigration on medical and social services in that region. They care far more about the environment and gay marriage and other progressive causes than about mundane concerns such as fuel and farm exports and middle-class jobs. They form a cash-laden constituency with enormous pull in the state legislature.

Believe me, I'm not a fan of slurping up tons of calories and carbs daily in drinks filled with sugar. Nevertheless.... warning labels?

A bill to require sugary soft drinks to carry labels warning of obesity, diabetes and tooth decay passed the California Senate on Thursday, the latest move by lawmakers nationwide aimed at persuading people to drink less soda.

Sometimes in today's world, finding sanity is not always easy. Doing waaaaaay more than one little person really can in a day, I've managed to harm my own health through stress and overwork. Thus - trying to pare down and thus not posting anywhere as much as I used to do (should anyone have noticed).

With my love for philosophy and argument, I wish I could spend loads of time engaging in such activities. For now, however - not (as they say) in the cards.

Nevertheless, wanted to share this with people. More government is not the answer. Freedom to do as we wish, as much as possible, is.

Fifty years ago, Singapore and Hong Kong were very poor Asian city-states, without natural resources. Yet now, their millions of citizens enjoy the highest living standards and life spans on the planet — Singapore being No. 3 and Hong Kong No. 4 in terms of longevity. They did not achieve success from foreign aid or by government spending (which is well under 20 percent of GDP in both places). They achieved this by having a great deal of economic freedom — Hong Kong being No. 1 and Singapore at No. 2 out of the 159 countries ranked. Other countries that are not yet as rich as Singapore and Hong Kong but that have opted for the smaller government model, such as Taiwan and South Korea, and developing countries, such as Chile, have been growing more rapidly than their more statist competitors — which results in the vast majority of their citizens having a much higher quality of life.

According to the World Bank, Switzerland now has a higher GDP per capita, both in nominal terms and in purchasing power parity (PPP), than the United States. France and Switzerland are neighbors, and France has many more natural resources than Switzerland, as well as numerous ports, of which Switzerland has none. Yet, the Swiss have a per-capita income one-third larger than the French, and an unemployment rate one-third of the French.

As can be seen in the table, rising per-capita incomes, economic growth and low levels of unemployment are more often associated with smaller, not larger, government and economic freedom. Numerous studies show that as government grows as a percentage of GDP (above about 25 percent), economic growth and job creation slow, not rise. The same thing is true at the state level in America. The big-spending states, such as California, Illinois and New York, are losing population and economic share to lower-tax and lower-spending states, such as Texas and Florida (neither of which has a state income tax).

Those clamoring for higher and higher minimum wages claim to want to help those with little. What they do not seem to realize, however, is that the true path to success and greater wealth cannot be guaranteed for people.

While U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren sleeps in her $5 million mansion in Cambridge, and got paid $350,000 to teach just one class at Harvard, she had the audacity to say in an interview with Jon Stewart this week that “the system is rigged to benefit the rich.”

Yes, Sen. Warren, that would be you. Under a free-market, capitalist system, you became a U.S. senator and multimillionaire whose own net worth hovers around $14.5 million, according to personal financial disclosure reports filed in 2011.

Newsflash for Warren: With that kind of cash, you are a one-percenter! That very demographic you vilified and campaigned against.

Yet liberal hypocrites, like Warren and countless fellow phonies in Hollywood, want to denigrate a capitalist system — and make America a socialist country after they personally benefited from a free-market system. Now once Warren and Hollywood hypocrites are living lavishly in their ivory towers, they preach about “income inequality” and the “little guys.”

Memo to Warren: Students at Harvard are among the little guys. Like millions of other college students across America, they are paying outrageously high tuition so one-percenters like yourself can reap the benefits.

If Sen. Warren truly cared about the little guy, why not return most of her salary to Harvard for teaching just one class and lobby fellow liberal professors to do the same? Then Harvard could actually lower its tuition costs for all students. Sounds like practical income redistribution to me.

When I was a child in the '50's, growing up in Chicago, interaction between whites and blacks was quite different than it is today. Most of the black people whites knew were cleaning people, or took care of children, or were cooks or laborers of some sort. No black people lived in our modest suburban neighborhood. When I attended high school in the '60's, out of almost 4,000 students, only a handful were black.

Today? In Minnesota suburban neighborhood - the land where 40 years ago people wondered "what my country of origin was" because I had dark brown hair (!) - people of all races are everywhere ... No matter where you go, you see people of color who are doctors and salespeople, attorneys, CEO's - you name it. Walk through Costco and you'd think you'd been dropped in the middle of the United Nations. My friends and I are all colors, all religions, from various parts of the world - and - so what? We share common interests in bridge, real estate, politics, photography, movies and more. Skin color is irrelevant.

Yet, day after day, year after year, to read the pages of the mainstream media and to listen to the bleating of too many politicians, you'd think that we were still but an inch removed from the days of Jim Crow, when blacks couldn't walk through certain neighborhoods, or ever think of going to medical school, or marrying a pleasant blonde girl. And I, for some time, am of the opinion that this constant harping on racism and venom and hate does little more than exacerbate the hate that does still exist in the minds of a few, flaming it and keeping it alive - even growing it. These people are not reporting; they are parasites, harming the lives of millions so they can sell papers or magazines or get elected.

One recent example of how this plays out occurred in Detroit. Some poor man happened to be driving in a neighborhood when a child ran in front of his car. Unable to stop in time, the child was hit - and the man immediately got out to see what he could do to help the child.

What did he receive for this honorable behavior? A beating that nearly cost him his life.

Need we remark that the victim was white, and the child and assailants black?

Personally, I think that at least part of why this occurred is because of the race industry - keeping hate alive so that those who make a living off of racism don't see it die off.

Sadly, the talk after the attack on Mr. Utash wasn’t about a man who stopped to do the right thing. It wasn’t about Ms. Hughes, the gun-toting angel of mercy who saw no color except the red of his blood. It wasn’t about the use of justifiable force or the value of carrying a sidearm.

Instead white people asked: Where were the old-school civil rights advocates who usually spoke out against such beatings? Where was Reverend Al? Why did it take Jesse Jackson almost two weeks to say something? Not that any of them really wanted famous civil rights leaders coming to town and marching around. What they seemed to be demanding was an admission from black leaders that blacks harbor racial hatred, too.

But leaders nationally and in Detroit stayed curiously silent. A medical fund was established for Mr. Utash, but it took more than a week to convene a vigil for him as he lay in a coma. Until that vigil not even Mike Duggan — the first elected white mayor of Detroit in 40 years — made a public appearance about it. (Though he did put out a press release and a tweet.) Nor did any City Council person that I’m aware of. And nothing from President Obama. Rage and hopelessness are no excuses here. All Detroit, whether black or white, noticed the silence.

The fact is, it’s often hard to be white in America, too, especially in a struggling city like Detroit. Just ask the Utash family.

Three black men I spoke with at the gas station a few days after the beating acknowledged this two-way street. They called Mr. Utash an honorable man for stopping to help when too many people in this city don’t. They mocked the silence of civic leaders. They wanted to know why the mayor had not come to their neighborhood. They knew the score. They’re Americans. And they also know that we can’t expect those leaders to solve this riddle of ours called race.

If you’re looking for any hope in this story, go back to the corner of Morang and Balfour on the east side of the city of Detroit, where two very good people named Steve Utash and Deborah Hughes met one very bad day.

There are plenty of Mr. Utashes out there, and Ms. Hughes. I want to read more about all these fine people who Do The Right Thing - no matter the race of who is involved.

Many times, I've heard people castigate those in a field who know something wrong is occurring - yet do nothing at all to stop it. Add me to those who think people should Do The Right Thing, and try to weed out the "bad apples" by exposing them.

Yet, when I read this article today, I could only wonder: is it moral to ask of anyone to live through this kind of hell to assist in reaching justice? Would you be willing to have this happen to you?

In a landmark judgment, the tribunal ruled that Dr Mattu had been targeted specifically by hospital managers because he’d blown the whistle on dangerous practices.

This is Dr Mattu’s first in-depth newspaper interview since his name was cleared, and what he reveals is a shocking indictment of the way the NHS is managed and the way it treats staff who speak out on behalf of patients.

He is now seeking a meeting with Health Minister Jeremy Hunt, but has this stark warning for any other health professional thinking of blowing the whistle to protect their patients.

‘Don’t do it, because the way I have been treated is nothing short of an outrage and a scandal,’ said Dr Mattu, a once world-renowned specialist who is now unemployed and doubts his medical career will ever recover.

‘Instead of listening to me, embracing what I said and working with me to improve conditions for patients, Trust managers tried to destroy me. It was a form of torture.

‘They stopped at nothing to change the focus from the patients - who were at the heart of my concerns - onto false claims about this allegedly “bad doctor” who needed to be removed.

‘They tried to shut me up and sideline me. I was marched from my office in broad daylight in front of my staff, colleagues and patients sitting in my waiting room.

‘Rather than work with me to improve patient care, they searched for reasons to discredit me, humiliate me and destroy my career. And once they’d set the wheels in motion, they were prepared to throw millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money at it.

‘I am relieved that this judgment completely vindicates me. It found I had not caused nor contributed to my dismissal; that my dismissal was inextricably linked to whistleblowing and that I had suffered directly.

‘Patients have been betrayed. Even today, there has still been no investigation into the deaths that I witnessed.’

‘There’s been a shift in my working life from managers working alongside clinical staff to dictating from a central office how care should be delivered, which may not be in the best interests of patients.

‘And so millions of pounds which could have been better spent elsewhere have been wasted persecuting me. It is ridiculous.’

Many of my "progressive" friends bewail the rigid almost "caste-like" system in the U.S. today. They strongly believe that if you were born into poverty, there you shall stay for virtually all your life. Likewise, if you parents were well-to-do or rich; you shall be, also.

It turns out that 12 percent of the population will find themselves in the top 1 percent of the income distribution for at least one year. What’s more, 39 percent of Americans will spend a year in the top 5 percent of the income distribution, 56 percent will find themselves in the top 10 percent, and a whopping 73 percent will spend a year in the top 20 percent of the income distribution.

Yet while many Americans will experience some level of affluence during their lives, a much smaller percentage of them will do so for an extended period of time. Although 12 percent of the population will experience a year in which they find themselves in the top 1 percent of the income distribution, a mere 0.6 percent will do so in 10 consecutive years.

It is clear that the image of a static 1 and 99 percent is largely incorrect. The majority of Americans will experience at least one year of affluence at some point during their working careers. (This is just as true at the bottom of the income distribution scale, where 54 percent of Americans will experience poverty or near poverty at least once between the ages of 25 and 60).

A further example of such fluidity can be found in an analysis by the tax-policy expert Robert Carroll. Using data from the Internal Revenue Service, Mr. Carroll showed that between 1999 and 2007, half of those who earned over $1 million a year did so just once during this period, while only 6 percent reported millionaire status across all nine years.

One of the reasons for such fluidity at the top is that, over sufficiently long periods of time, most American households go through a wide range of economic experiences, both positive and negative. Individuals we interviewed spoke about hitting a particularly prosperous period where they received a bonus, or a spouse entered the labor market, or there was a change of jobs. These are the types of events that can throw households above particular income thresholds.

Ultimately, this information casts serious doubt on the notion of a rigid class structure in the United States based upon income. It suggests that the United States is indeed a land of opportunity, that the American dream is still possible — but that it is also a land of widespread poverty. And rather than being a place of static, income-based social tiers, America is a place where a large majority of people will experience either wealth or poverty — or both — during their lifetimes.

Rather than talking about the 1 percent and the 99 percent as if they were forever fixed, it would make much more sense to talk about the fact that Americans are likely to be exposed to both prosperity and poverty during their lives, and to shape our policies accordingly. As such, we have much more in common with one another than we dare to realize.

So let’s look at True the Vote’s “crime,” and how the Democrats intended to punish Engelbrecht and what it all means.

There was a plan by Democrats, in Congress and infested in the government bureaucracy, to use Barack Obama’s second term to destroy freedom of speech and the right to dissent, through prosecution and the fear of prosecution. Lerner’s emails disclosed today prove that. Only Russell George’s unstoppable disclosure forced her to shut it down and issue a modified, limited hangout to control the damage that was about to be done to her, the IRS and possibly the entire Democratic Party and the Obama White House. Lerner pleaded the Fifth Amendment to protect herself, and many others.

The purpose of the plan that Lerner was moving on was to stifle dissent and give Democrats total control of Congress in 2014, giving President Obama full control of all of government for his last two years in office.

Alongside that plan, was a plan to destroy anyone who advocated for election integrity legislation, legislation which gained steam and widespread passage at the state level after the 2010 mid-term elections. What this tells us is that the Democrats, at least some Democrats, fully intended to weaponize government against dissent while it watered down election law and used lawfare via the Justice Department to damage and even remove state-level election law improvements.

Criminalizing conservative activism was about consolidating the Democrats’ 2012 gains and winning back the House in 2014. Destroying voter ID by whatever means Democrats deemed necessary was about 2016. There’s only one reason to make it easier to commit election fraud. You only do that if you intend to commit election fraud.

Taking assets from the sons and daughters of people who were children when the purported violation occurred? Does this seem like theft to you; it surely does to me!

A few weeks ago, with no notice, the U.S. government intercepted Mary Grice’s tax refunds from both the IRS and the state of Maryland. Grice had no idea that Uncle Sam had seized her money until some days later, when she got a letter saying that her refund had gone to satisfy an old debt to the government — a very old debt.

When Grice was 4, back in 1960, her father died, leaving her mother with five children to raise. Until the kids turned 18, Sadie Grice got survivor benefits from Social Security to help feed and clothe them.

Now, Social Security claims it overpaid someone in the Grice family — it’s not sure who — in 1977. After 37 years of silence, four years after Sadie Grice died, the government is coming after her daughter. Why the feds chose to take Mary’s money, rather than her surviving siblings’, is a mystery.

Across the nation, hundreds of thousands of taxpayers who are expecting refunds this month are instead getting letters like the one Grice got, informing them that because of a debt they never knew about — often a debt incurred by their parents — the government has confiscated their check.

“It was a shock,” said Grice, 58. “What incenses me is the way they went about this. They gave me no notice, they can’t prove that I received any overpayment, and they use intimidation tactics, threatening to report this to the credit bureaus.”

Grice filed suit against the Social Security Administration in federal court in Greenbelt this week, alleging that the government violated her right to due process by holding her responsible for a $2,996 debt supposedly incurred under her father’s Social Security number.

I stand before you as someone who is fighting for women's and girls' basic rights globally. And I stand before you as someone who is not afraid to ask difficult questions about the role of religion in that fight.

The connection between violence, particularly violence against women, and Islam is too clear to be ignored. We do no favors to students, faculty, nonbelievers and people of faith when we shut our eyes to this link, when we excuse rather than reflect.

So I ask: Is the concept of holy war compatible with our ideal of religious toleration? Is it blasphemy—punishable by death—to question the applicability of certain seventh-century doctrines to our own era? Both Christianity and Judaism have had their eras of reform. I would argue that the time has come for a Muslim Reformation.

Is such an argument inadmissible? It surely should not be at a university that was founded in the wake of the Holocaust, at a time when many American universities still imposed quotas on Jews.

The motto of Brandeis University is "Truth even unto its innermost parts." That is my motto too. For it is only through truth, unsparing truth, that your generation can hope to do better than mine in the struggle for peace, freedom and equality of the sexes.

Two months ago, a petition bearing more than 110,000 signatures was delivered to The Post, demanding a ban on any article questioning global warming. The petition arrived the day before publication of my column, which consisted of precisely that heresy.

The column ran as usual. But I was gratified by the show of intolerance because it perfectly illustrated my argument that the left is entering a new phase of ideological agitation — no longer trying to win the debate but stopping debate altogether, banishing from public discourse any and all opposition.

The proper word for that attitude is totalitarian. It declares certain controversies over and visits serious consequences — from social ostracism to vocational defenestration — upon those who refuse to be silenced.

Sometimes the word comes from on high, as when the president of the United States declares the science of global warming to be “settled.” Anyone who disagrees is then branded “anti-science.” And better still, a “denier” — a brilliantly chosen calumny meant to impute to the climate skeptic the opprobrium normally reserved for the hatemongers and crackpots who deny the Holocaust.

Then last week, another outbreak. The newest closing of the leftist mind is on gay marriage. Just as the science of global warming is settled, so, it seems, are the moral and philosophical merits of gay marriage.

To oppose it is nothing but bigotry, akin to racism. Opponents are to be similarly marginalized and shunned, destroyed personally and professionally.

But why stop with Brendan Eich, the victim of this high-tech lynching? Prop 8 passed by half a million votes. Six million Californians joined Eich in the crime of “privileging” traditional marriage. So did Barack Obama. In that same year, he declared that his Christian beliefs made him oppose gay marriage.

Yet under the new dispensation, this is outright bigotry. By that logic, the man whom the left so ecstatically carried to the White House in 2008 was equally a bigot.

A black woman, who is an atheist and a strong defender of women's rights. Someone who believes women should be treated with respect - a woman who did this:

She established a foundation, the goal of which is to protect women in the West who are the victims of religiously inspired oppression and, in Ali’s own words, to

reinforce the basic rights and freedoms of women and girls, including security and control of their own bodies, access to an education, the ability to work outside the home and control their own income, freedom of expression and association, and the myriad other basic civil rights defined under the laws of Western democracies and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

I mean, doesn't this sound right up the alley of what today's progressives are all about?

Read the whole thing. Then wonder what has happened to a nation and some of our best universities, that because a woman whose body has been mutilated, who was promised away as a young girl to a man she didn't love in marriage, whose partner in a film was murdered because of that film - and she also threatened with death ... wonder why someone who has lived through all this and fights against all for which it stands is told she cannot get an award which originally was promised.

This was OK for someone to get an award at Brandeis - but - not Ali. What a world.

Those who have remarked reflexively that they could not imagine a university giving in to pressure leveled against a staunch critic of Christianity or Judaism presumably do not know just how right they are. Responding to criticism after it elected to confer an honorary degree on Tony Kushner — a playwright who has admitted to having “a problem with the idea of a Jewish state” and to believing that “the biggest supporters of Israel are the most repulsive members of the Jewish community” — Brandeis clarified its policy toward the controversial, explaining that the college

bestows honorary degrees as a means of acknowledging the outstanding accomplishments or contributions of individual men and women in any of a number of fields of human endeavor. Just as Brandeis does not inquire into the political opinions and beliefs of faculty or staff before appointing them, or students before offering admission, so too the University does not select honorary degree recipients on the basis of their political beliefs or opinions.

That’s the argument: Each company has a right—indeed, it has a market-driven obligation—to make hiring and firing decisions based on “values” and “community standards.” It’s entitled to oust anyone whose conduct, with regard to sexual orientation, is “bad for business” or for employee morale.

The argument should sound familiar. It has been used for decades to justify anti-gay workplace discrimination.

In the late summer/early fall of 1998, an employee, one of the sales representatives that I supervised, learned that I was gay and “outed” me—that is, told a number of other direct reports in my Region that I was gay—without my knowledge. … [Two of them] informed one of their coworkers that they didn't want to work for me … [They] told my supervisor that they could not trust me and said that I was secretive. … [M]y supervisor and his boss, the Vice President of Sales, placed me on probation and advised me that my “job was in jeopardy.” They explained that I was “hired to build the team in NY” and that based on feedback from “several of [my] people'” I was failing to get this “critical phase of [my] job done.” They … told me to return to New York and “reflect on what may be causing this dissension among my people.” … [Then they] fired me. When asked if this had anything to do with my performance or work ethic the Vice President of Sales stated, “Let's just say you don't fit” …

Dissension. Building the team. Don’t fit. Sounds a lot like the case for removing Eich.

Losing your job for being gay is different from losing your job for opposing gay marriage. Unlike homosexuality, opposition to same-sex marriage is a choice, and it directly limits the rights of other people. But the rationales for getting rid of Eich bear a disturbing resemblance to the rationales for getting rid of gay managers and employees. He caused dissension. He made colleagues uncomfortable. He scared off customers. He created a distraction. He didn’t fit.

It used to be social conservatives who stood for the idea that companies could and should fire employees based on the “values” and “community standards” of their “employees, business partners and customers.” Now it’s liberals. Or, rather, it’s people on the left who, in their exhilaration at finally wielding corporate power, have forgotten what liberalism is.

Hank Aaron Would Have Faced Worse Racism Today

At least those leaving comments "get it."

The only people consumed by the issue of race are the coastal elites who are out of contact with the real country and race hustlers who make their livelihood by stirring derision. The American public by and large are past it.

America, though far from perfect, is probably the LEAST racist nation on planet earth

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I’m not sure what else to say except that anybody who sees “ubiquitous” bigotry and hate in a largely white nation that has black judges, police chiefs, doctors, lawyers, celebrities, CEOs, Congressmen, a Supreme Court Justice, and President, and thinks it’s as bad or worse today than it was 40-50 years ago….is an idiot.

this is one of the most ignorant pieces from the left in a long long long long time

I am a staunch supporter of gay rights. I have close friends, family, colleagues, clients, bridge partners, teammates, neighbors and others who happen to be gay. Yet, even if I knew few who were gay, I see no reason why someone should face discrimination due to their sexual orientation.

That being said.... Sometimes, rights collide.

People can actually be supportive of the rights of others, but disagree as to exactly how certain protections should be defined by law. In addition, we simply don't always view the world identically. And when we do not, what kind of sanctions, public or private, should be levied against those with whom we do disagree?

A number of my friends who also support gay rights think that this was an appropriate action on the part of Mozilla. I cannot help but wonder, however - do these same people realize that President Obama was clearly in the "Gay marriage should not be law, and my religion teaches me this" camp at the same time Eich made his donation? My guess is that most of these same people voted for Obama. If I am correct, then why aren't they upset that Obama is still leading our nation? And how could they vote for him?

Two posts at Hot Air have excellent analysis of this affair. Both Thursday's and Friday's collections of opinion and commentary are well worth your while to read.

I am a supporter of gay marriage; I worked toward laws for it in Minnesota that passed, and I am grateful that, irrespective of sexual orientation, every adult in our state now can marry the person they love. Still, I also share the thoughts expressed below. "If we cannot live and work alongside people with whom we deeply disagree, we are finished as a liberal society."

As I said last night, of course Mozilla has the right to purge a CEO because of his incorrect political views. Of course Eich was not stripped of his First Amendment rights. I’d fight till my last breath for Mozilla to retain that right. What I’m concerned with is the substantive reason for purging him. When people’s lives and careers are subject to litmus tests, and fired if they do not publicly renounce what may well be their sincere conviction, we have crossed a line. This is McCarthyism applied by civil actors. This is the definition of intolerance. If a socially conservative private entity fired someone because they discovered he had donated against Prop 8, how would you feel? It’s staggering to me that a minority long persecuted for holding unpopular views can now turn around and persecute others for the exact same reason. If we cannot live and work alongside people with whom we deeply disagree, we are finished as a liberal society…

Here’s what Eich said last month: “I know some will be skeptical about this, and that words alone will not change anything. I can only ask for your support to have the time to ‘show, not tell’; and in the meantime express my sorrow at having caused pain.” There is not a scintilla of evidence that he has ever discriminated against a single gay person at Mozilla; he was dedicated to continuing Mozilla’s inclusive policies; he was prepared to prove that the accusations against him were unfair, and that his political views would not affect his performance as CEO. But this was not enough. He had to be publicly punished for supporting a Proposition that is no longer in effect. This is absolutely McCarthyism from an increasingly McCarthyite left.

I have devoted most of my life to understanding the principles that enable people to improve their lives. It is those principles—the principles of a free society—that have shaped my life, my family, our company and America itself.

Unfortunately, the fundamental concepts of dignity, respect, equality before the law and personal freedom are under attack by the nation's own government. That's why, if we want to restore a free society and create greater well-being and opportunity for all Americans, we have no choice but to fight for those principles. I have been doing so for more than 50 years, primarily through educational efforts. It was only in the past decade that I realized the need to also engage in the political process.

A truly free society is based on a vision of respect for people and what they value. In a truly free society, any business that disrespects its customers will fail, and deserves to do so. The same should be true of any government that disrespects its citizens. The central belief and fatal conceit of the current administration is that you are incapable of running your own life, but those in power are capable of running it for you. This is the essence of big government and collectivism

Instead of fostering a system that enables people to help themselves, America is now saddled with a system that destroys value, raises costs, hinders innovation and relegates millions of citizens to a life of poverty, dependency and hopelessness. This is what happens when elected officials believe that people's lives are better run by politicians and regulators than by the people themselves. Those in power fail to see that more government means less liberty, and liberty is the essence of what it means to be American. Love of liberty is the American ideal.

If more businesses (and elected officials) were to embrace a vision of creating real value for people in a principled way, our nation would be far better off—not just today, but for generations to come. I'm dedicated to fighting for that vision. I'm convinced most Americans believe it's worth fighting for, too.

Maybe you were not that excited that 2012 gave you a choice between Mitt Romney and Barack Obama. I sympathize — I liked Rick Perry. But how is President Romney vs. President Obama a hard choice? How is Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell vs. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid a hard choice? How is Speaker of the House John Boehner vs. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi a hard choice?

The Obama administration has handed conservatives — and, more important, the country — disaster after disaster after disaster. Rather than scaling back the most worrisome aspects of the surveillance state and the so-called War on Terror, President Obama has expanded on them. Taxes are up, spending is up (2013 spending was $250 billion more than 2009, itself not exactly a banner year for fiscal restraint), health insurance is a chaotic mess subject to ad hoc revision every time Democratic political necessities demand it, our allies are dispirited, our enemies emboldened, our religious liberties under attack by the very government entrusted with defending them, our economy anemic, with too many of our people unemployed and those who are employed earning too little.

I am not naïve enough to believe that having elected Mitt Romney president or consigning the Democrats to the minority in both houses of Congress would change all that. But unless you are ready to give up on electoral politics entirely — and I confess to wavering on that question with a bias toward despair — then it is a matter of deciding whether X is preferable to Y. And sometimes that is a pretty easy call.

Reverend Fred Phelps of the Westboro Baptist Church has died. While there may be a few who mourn his death, I imagine millions of others are at least shedding no tears that a many filled with so much hate and who committed hateful actions can no longer spread his venom on this earth.

The social media exploded on the Internet with suggestions of how the death of Mr. Phelps should be marked by those he tormented in his long life. Several members of gay advocacy groups suggested that he “get a taste of his own medicine,” and urged that protests be organized for his funeral. One twitterbird tweeted the proposal that vulgarity be answered with bad taste: “Let’s protest the Westboro Baptist Church’s funeral by holding a graveside gay wedding and rave.” Another said the graveside message should be “God loves gays.”

But others said no, leave the family and their organization alone in their grief. “If the reports of Fred Phelps‘ declining health are accurate,” said Sandra Meade, director of Equality Kansas, as Mr. Phelps lay dying, “then his family and friends are certainly saying their goodbyes and preparing to mourn his loss. We ask that everyone understand the solemnity of the occasion, and honor the right of his family and friends to remember and mourn in private without interruption or unseemly celebration.”

George Takei, an actor and advocate, agreed: “I take no solace or joy in this man’s passing. We will not dance on his grave, nor stand vigil at his funeral holding ‘God hates Freds’ signs, tempting as it may be. He was a tormented soul, who tormented so many. Hate never wins out in the end. It instead always goes to its lonely, dusty end.”

The rich irony here is that some of the gays Mr. Phelps mocked and despised obeyed the Christian commandment to turn the other cheek in answer to insult, offense and torment. Faith teaches us all that it’s the sin, not the sinner, that God hates.

I do believe that the Washington Post is the best national daily paper today. So - if they are doing this, journalism is in a sad state of affairs.

So the fundamental point of the Post story, which relied uncritically on a goofball far-left report, is dead wrong. Moreover, the Post story itself acknowledges that the tar sands encompass 35 million acres, so Koch’s 1.1 million comprise less than 3% of the total. The whole point of this exercise is to make the Keystone Pipeline all about Koch, and that premise is implausible from the start.

But there is much more. The Post more or less endorses IFG’s theory that the Keystone pipeline somehow would benefit Koch, even though the Post notes that there is zero evidence to that effect.

And...

Why would the Washington Post embarrass itself by republishing a thoroughly discredited attempt to link the Koch brothers to the Keystone Pipeline? Because that is a Democratic Party talking point, and the Post is a Democratic Party newspaper. But the truth is a little worse than that.

Who is Post reporter Juliet Eilperin? Among other things, she is married to Andrew Light, who writes on climate policy for the Center for American Progress. The Center for American Progress is an Obama administration front group headed by John Podesta, who is a “special advisor” to the Obama administration. CAP’s web site, Think Progress, has carried out a years-long vendetta against the Koch brothers that has focused largely on the environment. Ms. Eilperin’s conflict in writing about environmental issues has already been a subject of controversy at the Post. The paper’s ombudsman should examine this latest example of Ms. Eilperin throwing facts to the winds in her eagerness to promote her (and her husband’s) far-left agenda.

I might add that I have very good friends who are honest and earnest journalists. It saddens me to see a valuable and critical part of our world being weakened like this.